I think Plato structured his work as a dialogue because this approach would have been the best form of written expression that was similar to rhetoric. His teacher, Socrates, never expressed his teachings through written form. Taking this into consideration, dialogue, although it is a form of writing is the closest thing to rhetoric because people are conversing and expressing themselves as if they were speaking to one another. Through this, he would have been able to communicate his thoughts effectively and at the same time get his point across. I think written dialogue is like conversation because characters express themselves through words. One does not know what the character is thinking in their minds, like they do in novels. They can only express what they say and how they say it is crucial because the emphasis of the point he is trying to get across is being spoken out loud.
Thinking
Cropped image of a Socrates bust for use in philos...
The "obscene" medieval depiction of Socrates and P...The tone is totally different because the phrases, sentences and points are more important because nothing but speech is mentioned.
Yes, I found Phaedrus difficult to read because I thought it was really boring. Generally speaking, the vocabulary was not difficult to understand, but I do not like reading dialogue. Instead, I prefer reading novels because I feel like I am relating more with the character, instead of being an onlooker who is listening to a conversation.
I think the role of the reader in this dialogue is to simply be a critical audience. I mean, Socrates taught through demonstration. The reader is the one who reads the dialogue and comes to their own conclusions depending on what they have read. Although Socrates did agree more or less with Phaedrus, uses the same premise, but defines the term of love and approaches it differently. I think that...